Franchise Update Magazine Issue IV, 2011 | Page 10

Grow Market Lead

By John Carroll

CEO
profile: Man on a Mission
Building an empire on a foundation of smiles

Name: Amit Kleinberger
Title: CEO
Company: Menchie’s Group Inc.
No. of units: 118
Age: 31
Family: Wife
Years in franchising: 4
Years in current position: 4

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A

mit Kleinberger rattles off
the business start-ups he’s
launched like a general listing
the cities he’s seized. There
was the chain of cellular phone equipment stores, a window and glass distribution company in Los Angeles, and the
assisted living building for Alzheimer’s
and dementia care.
He got each of the operations up and
running and then sold them, restlessly
moving on, looking for a new mission:
that one big concept he could take global.

Then he got very, very interested in
a partnership where he had invested a
significant amount of time and money.
Menchie’s, a self-serve frozen yogurt
concept, had all of one store open when
Kleinberger got involved with the original
two partners. It was close to four years
ago when he decided to lead the company forward. Since then, he’s devoted
most of his waking hours to making it
one of the fastest-growing franchise
operations in the country.
“We have today over 200 franchisees in the United States and globally
with 118 open stores,” says Kleinberger.
But the U.S. market isn’t big enough to
contain his ambition. “In addition we
have 154 stores being developed as we
speak. Within just shy of 4.5 years we
should have 250 open stores in the U.S.,
Canada, and other countries, with our
first store in the Middle East opening
in three months.”
Internationally, he says, Menchie’s
has stores being developed in the U.K.,
Mexico, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad
and Tobago, Australia, and soon China
and India—and more countries are
being added regularly to the development plan. He’s made it his mission to
make Menchie’s the largest franchisor
of self-serve frozen yogurt in the world
by next spring, he says. If successful, he
will lead an army of thousands.
Before he ever started a company,
hired his first employee, or learned much
about frozen yogurt, Kleinberger was a
soldier in the infantry ground forces. At
the end of his three-year-stint, the active duty combat sergeant had learned
something about people, leadership,and
inspiring people to F